The “free-speech smack down,” as Johnson called it, showed that the racial chasm over Small-Toney’s hiring remains wide. It apparently will spill over into budget deliberations, the fall city election campaigns and maybe the courts.

Sprague hit a nerve when she said the late Don Mendonsa — city manager for 28 years — couldn’t be hired today “because of the color of his skin.”

“Don’t go there,” Johnson admonished Sprague.

But she already had.

She later cited the racially split 5-4 vote to choose Small-Toney, and Johnson’s statements that “it’s our turn” and that he wanted a manager that “looks like me.”

Thursday’s debate stemmed from Sprague’s lament that many people think the work force is becoming “all black.” At her request, city staff produced employee statistics and spending figures for various organizations and training.

The statistics showed that blacks dominated the jobs that are most visible to the public — service and maintenance.

Sprague suggested that more whites work in lower-level jobs.

“You can’t promote downward,” said Alderman Van Johnson.

The city statistics also showed that whites still dominate the less visible, but higher-paid, job areas.

Van Johnson and others defended the city’s help for the National Forum for Black Professional Administrators and support for training program.

They said the short-term goal is mentoring and training to prepare young blacks to move into top-level posts. The long-term goal: Make higher echelons more closely resemble Savannah’s majority-black population.

“I’m a product of that process,” said Van Johnson, employee services and training manager for Chatham County.

Thomas said it’s “racism” to spend tax dollars mostly for blacks, but Van Johnson said anyone can join the black administrators forum.

“I’ll pay your dues,” he told Sprague, who accepted the offer.

“One of the wonderful things about our country,” said the mayor, “is freedom of speech. We are exercising that right.

“But majority rule is part of democracy, and that is how we will decide this.”

Nothing was decided Thursday, but Sprague, Thomas and Jeff Felser said they will raise the issues again this fall when the council adopts a 2012 city budget.

Mayor Pro Tem Edna Jackson acknowledged they will surface, but not, she said, because they deserve special scrutiny.

“We are going to have to look at all budgets, not just specific ones,” Jackson said. “I’m sure there still are going be some shortfalls and we don’t know how revenue is going to come in.”

Felser said he expects some city employees to file discrimination lawsuits.

Training that targets only blacks give them an illegal “leg up” for promotions, he said. But Small-Toney said the city doesn’t “set aside money based on quotas.”

Felser and Jackson are running for mayor.

“I can’t say other people won’t make those things an issue,” she said, “but I definitely will not.”

But Felser says he will.

“I want to be the mayor for all the people,” he said. “I want people to treated equally by city government.”